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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,940 for Friday 8th of September 2023.

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Today's show is entitled Equipment Maintenance.

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It is part of the series Travel.

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It is hosted by Ahu Ka and is about 13 minutes long.

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It carries a clean flag.

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The summary is.

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We prepare the RV and the truck for our trip.

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Hello, this is Huka for Hacker Public Radio, welcoming you to another exciting episode

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about RV Travels, and this is talking about our 2022-2023 trip to the southeast.

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The last time we talked about all of the planning that went into it and getting the book

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prepared, well the next thing you have to deal with is Equipment Maintenance.

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And so we had to do that and we started with the tires.

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RV tires can blow out and among the main reasons is age.

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You see tires are a lot more complicated than many people realize.

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And one complication is that they contain chemicals that keep the rubber flexible and

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strong, but these chemicals can break down and disappear over time, so the tire which

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looks good and has plenty of tread can be on the verge of a blowout and that can be

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a very bad day indeed.

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It can do thousands of dollars worth of damage to your RV, leave you stranded on the

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side of the road and worst case cause you to lose control resulting the loss of the RV,

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the truck or even your life.

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So it's nothing to be casual about.

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Now the tires in our RV were manufactured in 2015.

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I mean, in the United States this is stamped on the side of the tire by federal regulation,

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so you can always check your tires and see when they were manufactured.

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And it's usually the code is six digits or maybe it's four digits, but there's two parts.

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The one is which week of the year and the other is which year it is.

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So you know, 36, 15 would be the 36th week of 2015 and that sort of thing.

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In any event, 2015, and we're looking at the end of 2022 meant that these were at least

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seven, probably over seven years old and that's old that you don't want to take chances

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that new tires were called for.

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So I decided to go with discount tire because their nationwide and have an excellent warranty.

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So I bought five tires, all right.

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I needed to replace the spare as well since it is and it turns out the spare was even older

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than the tires that were on the RV.

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The previous owner was not paying attention, I would say.

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In any event, I made an appointment to install all the tires.

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Then when we went to hook up the RV to the truck, it would not start.

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So I had to call roadside assistance.

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All right, that's an essential piece of insurance that you don't want to go without.

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If you're going to be doing any RVing, I would say I would not want to go without it just as a driver.

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It turned out we'd probably done it to ourselves.

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We had disconnected the negative battery cables since the truck was just sitting in there.

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And we didn't want the battery to run down.

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The vehicles these days are drawing in the battery all the time, sometimes referred to

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as parasitic load, turn on various devices and it can easily drain a battery over a few months.

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Then when I reconnected the negative, I didn't tighten the nuts sufficiently.

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The driver from roadside assistance was very helpful though, diagnosed the problem immediately

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and got it started.

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But he said it looked like the batteries were in bed shape.

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So when we got it running, I immediately drove it to the freight liner dealer and asked

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them to check it.

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There I discovered that we had not quite done it right.

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We disconnected the negative cable, but because we have multiple batteries in the truck,

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we would have needed to disconnect all of the negative cables or else there would still

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be a drain.

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We mentioned that most people install a battery shut-off switch to make it easy.

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So I asked him to check out the whole charging system and install such a switch.

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And then I would have to make a new appointment with discount tire.

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And of course we have also an appointment with General RV in November to do a number of

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RV maintenance repair tasks.

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Well, more fun a few weeks later, we got the RV to discount tire for the installation.

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We made the appointment for 8am when they opened, but we went down there closer to 720.

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And the reason for that is I wanted to get the RV into the position they asked before

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the parking lot filled up.

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I might have had room even with the cars, but I don't like taking chances with the truck

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and the RV connected the total length is about 50 feet and that's, you don't do tight

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turns that way.

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So I get down there and no problem.

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The installation process took about an hour and a half, but we ran into another little

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road bump.

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I bought five identical tires, but the spare was undersized and on a smaller rim, which

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I did not want.

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So we ended up taking the spare tire with us in ordering a proper rim on the internet.

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But we had new tires on the RV, so I felt good.

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This is called foreshadowing kids.

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We took it back to the storage lot and took the truck home so I could do a little maintenance

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such as touching up the paint and a few stops, a few spots.

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Cheryl told me she had made an appointment for 11 a.m. on November 11th, which would be

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104th anniversary of the armistice.

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But when we got to the storage lot to pick up the RV, we discovered one of the tires

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was flat.

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You really don't want to see that with a brand new tire.

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We had only had the tire 10 days at this point.

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So we called roadside assistance again and they actually had someone there in about

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an hour.

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And while I was dealing with this, Cheryl sent emails to the service person at General

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RV explaining the situation and that we would be late, but we'd get there when the tire

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was fixed.

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The company that roadside assistance set us was a local truck tire service, which

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I was glad to learn about, it makes sense that there would be such a service, but I'd

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never thought about it before.

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Now the service person diagnosed the problem instantly when I said we had just had the

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tires a few days and said it was probably the valve stem.

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He removed the tire and sprayed a solution of soap and water on the valve stem and you

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could see the bubbles.

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That pretty much proved the point.

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So he took the tire off of the rim, replaced the valve stem and remounted the tire.

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He said if one was bad, what were the odds on the others?

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And spraying them with that soap and water solution showed a second bad valve stem, not as

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bad as the first, but it wouldn't have been a slow leak.

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At this point we unanimously agreed to replace all of the valve stems, a valuable lesson

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learned.

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Now the service charged us $15 per valve stem.

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This is the truck tire roadside assistance service.

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Now I have no idea if that's a standard price, or if it is marked up, nor do I care.

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The point is that if the sales person at discount tire had said to me when I bought the

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tires in the first place, hey, you have all brand new tires here.

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We recommend you get new valve stems in addition only $15 each.

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And I would have gladly said make it so my good man.

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Instead I spent over $300 for a service call to the storage yard.

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I only wanted peace of mind in the first place and an extra $60 on my tire bill would not

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have bothered me in the least.

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I later went back to discount tire and they put in a refund claim which was paid to cover

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my costs for the roadside assistance.

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I had to show receipts and everything but I didn't get the money.

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While all of this was going on, Cheryl heard back from General RV that she had the date

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of our appointment wrong anyway, it was not November 11th but November 17th.

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There are lessons to be learned here.

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Okay, I never really knew much about the importance of valve stems but I think that from

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now on I will insist on new valve stems whenever I get new tires.

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I'd rather spend a few bucks up front than be dealing with the roadside assistance.

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And the other lesson learned is the importance of not putting things off until the last

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minute.

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Our trip does not start until December 15th so we have a month yet and can deal with these

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issues without disrupting the whole trip.

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In fact next year we planned to move our RV maintenance trip to General RV up by more than

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a month we're probably going to set it up for something like August just because it's

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better to have everything done well in advance.

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We took our RV into General RV and November 17th gave them the list of things we wanted

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to work on.

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Our service advisor Chad warned us that they were very busy and might not be able to get

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through the whole list.

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Again, this is a reason for moving up our visit and future.

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So we triaged the list, told them which ones were priorities.

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We also told them that we needed to get it back by December 13th to make our departure.

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Happily, he called us on December 5th to say it was ready so we went down and pick it up with them.

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Now we brought the spare tire with us so they could install it since I thought it was too

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heavy for us to manage.

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Couple of senior citizens trying to get a big truck tire and it mounts underneath the

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carriage of the RV just it did not make sense.

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So we had them do it, did they charge us for it?

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Of course they did, they charge us for every single thing they do, it's a business.

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The RV looked good in any event we were looking forward to making our departure on time.

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I told the RV back to the storage lot, Cheryl followed behind me and her car.

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I noticed the truck was running a bit rough and Cheryl said I was a meeting white smoke

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from the exhaust.

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Then we got to the storage lot, we thought the front jacks were not working.

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And if we couldn't use them getting the RV off the truck would be a problem.

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But as Cheryl was going to look for help, I started hitting buttons and suddenly it came

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on.

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It was working so I disconnected and drove the truck back to the house so I could plug

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it in.

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Now one of the things I learned from the roadside assistance guy who came to the truck

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in October was that diesel truck should be plugged in if left parked in cold weather and he

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showed me where the plug is.

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Another thing I didn't know about, but I could park it in my driveway and plug it in

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through the garage so that was the plan.

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But we're worried now about the truck, so on December 7th we took it to a westside freight

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liner.

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They were very busy and told us they probably could not look at it until December 13th.

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They didn't look at it and diagnosed that we needed a new injector, so that's another

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2000 repair bills.

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I thought RV travel was supposed to be inexpensive.

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But then they said that most likely the truck would not be done until December 16th

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which is one day past our scheduled departure.

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So once again I have to make some calls to reschedule our first few reservations.

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This should mostly mean less time and Memphis, but since there were only a few things

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I wanted to do there it probably isn't a big deal.

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So this is Huka for Hacker Public Radio signing off and is always encouraging you to support

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free software.

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Bye-bye, you have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio.org.

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The Internet Archive and our Sync.net, on this otherwise stages, today's show is released

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on our Creative Commons, Attribution, 4.0 International License.